Plastic Surgery is Burqa made of Flesh

A Vatican document called plastic surgery a burqa made of flesh, earlier this week. A summit to be held in Rome later this week will be discussing women’s issues, and ways and means of advancement of the fairer sex. Surprisingly, not a single woman will be on the table when the conversation begins.

While I am all for women’s choice and their right to do anything and whatever, I kind of agree with the Vatican document here. Plastic surgery, when a woman goes this route after an accident or other physical calamity, I am with her. But when she chooses to go for plastic surgery, in the attempt to look beautiful, I feel she is failing herself and perhaps conforming to the society’s view of what is beautiful. She is doing it in order to get a seat with the other so called beautiful women.

While there is nothing wrong in taking this path, but beauty to me is more than just skin deep. I am more concerned with the thought process that goes into her mind when she decides to shed a whole lot of money and to go under the knife while committing to days of recovery just to conform to the standards of beauty established by the society. How can we help today’s girls to be confident women of tomorrow? How can we steer her away from the self-hatred filter of her body and sex appeal?

Objectifying women, treating beautiful women like a piece of candy is as old as mankind. We feed into this mentality by being obsessed with beauty. More than half of the earth’s population is women, and if the primary purpose of this half is just to look beautiful – as a woman I find this thought insulting to my intelligence.

While there is progress in many of women’s issues, perhaps the basic issue lies forgotten. Self-respect, there is power in these words. We need to remind ourselves that we are more than just objects; we need to teach our younger versions the strength in self-respect.

Written by Suchitra Sharma